


Hush

by reyloandbehold



Series: Thirteen Nights of Klaroween [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, Klaroline, Multiple Crossovers, Other, klaroween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyloandbehold/pseuds/reyloandbehold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Special thanks to Nicole (thisisrealitsreal- tumblr) for making amazing graphics for us.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Hush

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Nicole (thisisrealitsreal- tumblr) for making amazing graphics for us.

_Over the hills in the west, mist fell upon the town, capturing everything in its path as it billowed over the asphalt, its ethereal whiteness bringing stillness to the land._

_A silent harbinger, its easily overcome by the mute horrors it paves the way for._

* * *

"Alright class, it's time for a demonstration." Alaric hollered over the din, Caroline wincing as the sound affronted her ears. "Caroline," he called, motioning for her to walk to the front of the class, "lay down."

So she did, noticing each face and living a century in every pair of eyes as she moved towards Alaric's empty wooden desk at the front of the classroom.

"Lay down." He chuckled, moving out of the way as she clamored onto the cold surface.

Craning her head, Caroline tried to read the board, but the letters on it were ones she'd only seen on the sides of monuments.

"Human. Contact," Alaric punctuated to the class, holding his thumb to his index and pointer finger, as if grasping the basis of the concept, "is pivotal." Then to a spot over Caroline's head, he spoke quietly. "Thank you for volunteering."

A face loomed over hers, and she jumped as Klaus smirked down at her.

"This is just for class, sweetheart," he smiled sweetly, leaning closer to her, "but your stuttering heart and I know better."

Far in the back of the class, a pencil thudded to the floor. Walking out of her vision, Caroline heard Alaric yell, "hush!" to the back of the class.

But Klaus was still above her, hovering even closer.

"I'll kiss you and make the sun fall away, sweetheart."

Then he kissed her, ice freezing its way from her lips and down her lungs. She gasped, pulling him into her, not caring anymore that she was in front of her entire history class.

Caroline felt like the air was expanding in her lungs until each atom was engorged, blocking the exit back out of her mouth. Klaus kissed her like frostbite, burning her by the frigidity of who he was.

A dark veil descended over and around her, and suddenly she was alone, the desk beneath her the only thing she could feel.

Climbing to her feet, she surveyed the empty room, the only illumination coming from a light in the hallway. The goldenrod curls of a young girl zipped past, and Caroline listened to the receding clack of heels on linoleum as she walked towards the door.

Stumbling a few steps, Caroline strained to hear any sound whatsoever, until finally the muffled sound of a music box sounded behind the door to the gym. Curious, but unable to figure out what she wanted to know, Caroline pushed open the heavy metal doors.

Under the glow of one solemn light, twirled the handle of an ornate music box while a tiny princess spun.

_"Can't even shout._  
_Can't even cry._  
_The Gentlemen are coming by._  
_Looking in windows,_  
_knocking on doors..._  
_They need to take seven_  
_and they might take yours..."_

Caroline blinked and the music stopped, even as the princess kept twirling.

But the music box was on the floor, a drop of something red splattered across the tiny dancer.

_"Can't call to mom._  
_Can't say a word._  
_You're gonna die screaming_  
_but you won't be heard."_

Still beating, the girl's heart had taken the place of the music box in her hands. Blood fell in droplets like ice cream, sticky and clumped, splattering to the ground. Her face was contorted in a scream, but not a syllable could be heard.

Pale blue, emaciated hands reached out of the periphery, clawing at Caroline's face, and she jolted awake, terror erupting from her.

The only noise in the room was the sound of her blanket fluttering to the floor.

* * *

Ice butted lightly at the confines of whiskey filled tumblers, but to everyone gathered in the Boarding House, it might as well have been a car colliding into a brick wall.

The entire town was mute, unable to utter a peep: when Caroline woke up from her nightmare and realized her high-pitched shriek hadn't woken Elena, an eerie awareness had settled over the blonde. After fifteen minutes spent rousing and calming her roommate, Caroline thanked the heavens for texting, and quickly assembled the Scooby Gang.

Which was where everyone currently was; motivated but without a clue as to what on earth was going on.

Thankfully, she had the forethought to grab the dry-erase bored off her dorm door, because charades was quickly proven to be a suggestively ineffective means of communication- though their history with Pictionary was less than stellar.

 _'Okay,'_ she scribbled onto the board, _'what do we know about what's happening?'_

Holding up a finger for patience, she motioned to Bonnie and the legal pad on the coffee table, pantomiming for the girl to keep a list going.

_'1. No one in Mystic Falls can speak.'_

In the corner, Damon rolled his eyes and turned towards the bar, his daylight ring tinkling against the crystal.

Just then, the front door swung open and in strode the Original Hybrid in all of his I-know-something-you-don't-know-and-I-plan-on-manipulating-you-all-with-said-knowledge smugness, but Caroline could only concentrate on how far away his mouth was from hers.

Quickly, she erased the board and scrawled his name. Underlined. Twice. With a giant question mark.

She didn't need to hear him to know his lips were spelling out his favorite nickname for her.

_Sweetheart._

Their eyes locked briefly, yet Caroline understood that she knew everything he did.

Erasing the board once again, she wrote what she knew.

_'The Gentlemen. They want '7'.'_

Apparently it wasn't much. Quizzical looks demanded more, and as she scrambled for some sort of elaboration, Klaus plucked the board and marker from her hands, and in neat, block letters, wrote one simple word.

_'Hearts.'_

* * *

_Casket sharp, they hovered a foot off the ground, their blue faces stretched thin over the bony protuberances of their skulls. Smiles were frozen in place, gleaming dully in the mid-road lamplight of the witching hour._

_A ways ahead of the five gentlemen, three humanoid creatures all but ran on all fours, dressed in white shreds of fabric that made them look like a trio of psych patients that pulled their restraints apart and escaped into the night. Despite the muzzles blocking the entirety of their faces, they all zeroed in on one location: the entrance to a small, silent house in the center of town._

_The gentlemen glided forward, beckoning this way and that in exaggerated gestures, each one insisting with their ever-present grins that the others venture down the driveway first. The tallest of the ensemble finally persisted in the lead, and with him he carried an old fashioned physician's bag._ _Their pets continued ahead and knocked against the door to the house, and the gentlemen gathered, rubbing their hands together in a slow, yet excited fashion._

_A tall, sleepy-eyed man with short blonde hair and shocking blue eyes answered moments later. When he registered what he was looking at, it was already too late._

_The creatures grabbed his thrashing arms and legs, effectively pinning him to the doorframe. He shrieked and yelled and shook with the intensity of his fear, but doing so without a voice only seemed to widen the smiles of the gentlemen now in front of him._

_In a grandiose maneuver, he opened the dark bag and pulled from it a single item. It fit between his thumb and forefinger easily, the insignificant sliver of metal he wielded before the horrified man, who resumed his struggling at the sight of it._

_Razor sharp, the scalpel was inched closer to the man's body._

_When it met his shirt, a beaded red line followed in its wake._

_Tears ran down the man's cheek as he watched the blade carve into his rib cage. With a flourish, the icy blue hand flicked his wrist once, then twice, and the blonde man stilled. Careful not to stain his cuffs, the gentleman pulled the heart from the man's chest, and passed it on to his comrades._

* * *

Night had long since fallen, and Caroline tried her damnedest to focus on the sights and smells around the high school, and not on the hybrid walking _extremely_ beside her.

After it became blatantly clear that the only way to learn about these 'gentlemen' freaks was to spread up a search the town for their hiding spot, Klaus had been in her space, touching her more than he ever had in the past. Not being able to speak forced him to find other means of communication: a hand ghosting over her thigh… the space where her false ribs ended and he could incite the nerve endings that could weasel their way into her gut and breed wisps of feather light shock that dropped her stomach to the floor.

They had been walking in circles for hours, when Klaus held up a hand for her to stop. Caroline rolled her eyes and crossed her arms impatiently as she waited for the thoughtful look on his face to clear enough so he'd focus on her and 'say' whatever he had to say.

One half step was all it took for him to be the only thing Caroline felt. The silence of the night had been irritating- she had started to long for even the grossest of human sounds- and the sound of Klaus's heart was overwhelming, dizzying her mind with the very essence of him. In seconds, she had its rhythm memorized.

His gaze was heated, and he very deliberately pointed from his lips to hers, where he then drew a sun before he let his hand fall down her neck.

Her dream.

Shaking her head, trying to forget everything about the way he had been so satisfyingly on top of her, Caroline backed away, but Klaus was faster and grabbed her arm, holding her to his chest. With his free hand, he found the spot over her heart, and pressed into her skin, the action sending her stomach thudding at the inside of her chest, wanting to know what a touch so full of devotion felt unbidden.

 _'_ _Mine.'_ He insisted, daring her to break away and deny the way they could be communicating so thoroughly without a single word having been spoken since they melted the day away behind closed eyes.

But their kiss had been the beginning of this silent night, and if coming together was the start, maybe breaking apart was the end.

* * *

_Six house calls later, the gentlemen stood apart at the entrances to five different driveways, their unmoving faces joyfully watching as their masked minions picked from their selections. There was no deliberation as the awkward creatures loped down one of the drives where a white car branded on the sides with a golden star was parked._

* * *

They lost contact as a single shot echoed, the only sound in the night. Caroline recognized it immediately.

Even Klaus couldn't follow as she flashed away.

She saw them as she rounded the corner onto her street, and any horror she felt before this moment was replaced by a blinding rage that sent her careening into the nearest suit-clad monster. A glass jar fell from his hands, shattering onto the floor.

Instantly, the growl she had been feeling in her throat was deafening in her ears. All five of the gentlemen cringed and covered their ears until the shock of _hearing_ herself cut the sound short.

For five beautifully calm seconds, Caroline let her breathing soothe her. Then she saw the dismembered heart on the floor, and she was back in her dream, seeing the little girl with the missing heart.

So she screamed.

Her throat protested and she felt her vocal cords fray, unable to produce the magnitude of a yell that she was demanding. The monsters began to vibrate and shake, which inspired in Caroline to relive every horrible thing that she'd lived through, spurring on the desire to keep screaming.

Within seconds, all five of the gentlemen stilled and their heads exploded. The creatures accompanying them disappeared in a poof of smoke.

None of that mattered to Caroline, and she was in her house before their floating bodies met the pavement.

"Mom?" She called out, sounding raspy and faint.

Inside the house, it was like they were still spellbound to silence, because her mom did not call back.

When Caroline reached the kitchen, Liz was on the counter, her gun on the floor beside her.

Twisted into something unrecognizable, Caroline's mother's face did not move- but the dark red stain on her uniform did.

"…Mommy?"

Such a stupid girl, always asking the wrong questions, but Caroline couldn't… there was no way the woman before her could be her mom. Liz was supposed to die with a contented smile on her face while she was tucked comfortably in her bed. There was not supposed to be a grotesque image of pure fear and agony etched into her features like she was marble, destined for an eternity the likes of which only statues knew.

Klaus was behind her by now, and Caroline turned on him, shrieking as she attacked him.

"You did this!" She accused, her eyes blacker than the hole in her mother's chest. "Fix it! Fix her!"

Each of her strikes was unblocked, and Klaus let her wail on him for a few minutes before grabbing her arms and trying to contain the super nova her skin now encased.

"You kissed me and made the sun go down! You made all of this happen, Klaus! My- my- my mom-" she gasped, her heart stealing her voice this time, not letting any of her hurt leave and be recognized by anyone other than herself.

Helpless, Klaus shook her by the shoulders, trying to break past the wall now between them. "Caroline-"

"No." Colder than he'd ever been to her, Caroline snapped and shoved away from him. "Make the sun come back up Klaus. Make it come back." Her eyes narrowed and she grit through her fangs, the only thing she would ever want from him: "Leave and never come back."

War clashed in his eyes, just long enough to keep Caroline from going back on her word. Klaus was no fool though, and he felt her become lost to him.

"I will walk away and never come back." He promised, looking away before he stopped allowing her to let grief make her irrational.

The door closed softly behind him, but it was loud enough to fracture Caroline.

* * *

Hours later, Stefan walked into the Forbes' residence. The scent of blood inspired the dullest of aches behind his fangs, but that was not what had him covering his mouth in horror.

On the kitchen floor, Caroline sat with her mother's disfigured face cradled in her lap. The gaping wound in Liz's sternum was disturbing and wrong and everything bad in the world.

"Caroline…" he mouthed, unable to articulate the level of sorrow she must be feeling.

But all she did was rock back and forth, muttering to herself the song her mother used to sing to her as a child.

" _Hush little baby don't say a word…"_


End file.
